Real Family Values

Every family needs a place to live. When banks use our homes and mortgages to make bets in the global casino, we wind up with predatory lending, financial bubbles, crashes, and foreclosures:

Shared Equity Home Ownership is a way to make homes permanently affordable. Community groups or local agencies invest in homes and share the equity with homeowners. When a homeowner sells, the agency shares in any gain, recycling the funds to keep homes permanently affordable. The foreclosure rate in Community Land Trusts, one example of this model, is 1/8th the national rate.

Increase the minimum wage so that those who work can
support their families and increase local economic activity. (In most
of northern Europe, the minimum wage is $12 an hour or more.) And end
pay discrimination against women, people of color, and single moms.

Many families care for disabled children and spouses, and elderly parents. Here are ways we can support them:

Protect Social Security from those who would like to cut it to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Help the elderly and disabled live at home by financing upgrades that make homes more accessible and weather proof.

Provide full VA benefits and protection from job
discrimination for veterans with PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and
other disabilities. Support community-based centers with services and
mutual support for veterans.

Support home caregivers through tax credits, payments toward their Social Security, and respite services.

Time is essential to good family life. Children, couples, and elders need companionship, vacations, and time to respond to life’s crises. In Europe, workers have at least four weeks paid vacation, and in Germany and the Netherlands, they have the right to switch to part-time hours:

Strengthen community colleges and the Pell Grant system so all qualified young people can go to college and contribute to the future of their families and our nation.

End the “cradle-to-prison pipeline” through local collaborations that intervene when young people get into trouble. The funds saved by lowering the rate of juvenile detention can be invested in substance-abuse treatment and education.

Fully fund domestic violence shelters, which are in high demand during the recession.

Protect families from exposure to cancer-causing contaminants. Use precautionary regulation, which forces manufacturers to prove chemicals are safe before putting them in our homes, workplaces, and schools, instead of the current approach, which puts the burden on consumers or regulators to prove harm. Give special attention to vulnerable groups—like children, farmworkers, and those in cancer “hot spots.”

Fund research into safe alternatives to toxic chemicals.

Making our tax system more equitable could bring down the deficit; sustain family-friendly local, state, and federal government programs; and help reduce vast inequality, which threatens the health of all families, rich and poor.

Make the first $20,000 of income free from payroll taxes. Make up for it by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000. Tax capital gains at the same rate as other income. Under President Eisenhower, the top marginal rate was 91 percent; today, it is just 35 percent.

Close offshore tax-havens that corporations use to hide profits and evade at least $100 billion in taxes each year. Share the revenues with struggling state and local governments for programs that support family well-being.

Our children, grandchildren, and great-grand-children deserve to inherit vibrant ecosystems, a strong democracy, and opportunities for a good life

Transition to renewable, clean energy. Invest massively in . Build infrastructure—like and —that makes sense in a time of energy constraints and climate disruption.

Free elections from wealthy special interests. Start by overturning the allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns.

. Invest in local jobs and .

Protect our heritage of diverse species and healthy habitats.

... by making it available to all committed couples, gay or straight.

Hospital visits, family leave to care for an ill partner, and spousal health care and pension benefits should be available to both straight and gay couples.

and stop separating families through detention and deportation.

Editorial interns Tiffany Ran and Alyssa Johnson contributed research to this article.

Interested?

:Sure, lots of us are frustrated by the economy, the war, and lack of
progress in Washington, D.C. But there's too much at stake to stay home
on election day.

Imagine
a no-holds-barred “summit” that comes up with ideas to solve both our
job and environmental problems. What might it come up with?

:A movement to put children’s rights at the center of our collective decisions is taking hold—and it’s good news for adults, too.

We’re facing a very different world than the one we knew. Here’s what people are doing to prepare.

The healthiest and happiest societies don't have more, but what they have is more equitably
shared.

CITATIONS AND RESOURCES

SAFEGUARD OUR HOMES

, a source of funding for shared equity housing

, a great resource on affordable housing and activism

CREATE JOBS

campaigns for jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy for low-income people.

, M.S., author of “When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind” (2006) to the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health's hearing on Mental Health Impacts of Iraq War on the Families of Guard/Reserve Veterans.

BALANCE WORK AND LIFE

Conversation with author, filmmaker, and activist , national coordinator, Take Back Your Time.